Image of the Moon extracted from videos taken in October last year.
Category Archives: astroimaging
Lunar Photo 13th Feb 2019
Around first quarter is a favourite phase of the moon, with the sun high enough in the lunar sky to show the rugged Montes Apenninus & Montes Caucasus emerging into the light in the northern half of the disk.
This image was taken on 13 February 2019 at 20:39 UT at the Piers Sellers Observatory with the 0.57m f/4.7 ‘Alan Young’ Newtonian and a ZWO ASI174MM camera at prime focus employing a 520nm filter. It is 500 frames stacked in AutoStakkert software.
In this view the crater Eudoxus proudly sits on sentry duty at the top end of Montes Caucasus.
The large basin of Mare Serenitatis (to the right) shows a distinct ray band, with the little crater Linne sitting there, exposed in the open!
Back on the other side of the range (left hand side), the secondary impactors in Cassini crater are clearly visible.
Between the ranges the central peaked crater Aristillus sits alongside the more massive Archimedes.
NGC 2244 (Caldwell 50) Image
Here is an image of NGC 2244 we captured recently at the Cadsas Observatory in Cranbrook. It’s an open cluster on the edge of the Rosette Nebula in constellation Monoceros.
This image is a stack of 9 captured images.
p-cygni Image – A most distant naked eye star
Captured last Friday with the Alan Young telescope at the CADSAS observatory.
p-cygni is a variable blue super giant, with a visual magnitude of between 4.5 and 5. At a distance of about 6000ly, it is one of the most distant stars visible with the naked eye.
Bubble Nebula NGC7635
Another fantastic astro image by CADSAS member Graham Caller. this is NGC7635, the Bubble nebula in Cassiopeia.
He gathered data for this Oct 2016 to Jan 2017. It’s a compilation of 35 single frames with exposure times of 5 minutes for Ha and 10 minutes for SII and OIII – total of 2 hr 55 mins of data capture.
OSH (OIII SII Ha) narrow band filters were used. He has colour mapped them to the RGB channels to give this false colour representation, in order to show a better contrast between the different channels.
OIII (oxygen) – red
SII (sulphur) – green
Ha (hydrogen) – blue
M13 Globular Cluster Image
An image of the M13 Globular Cluster. Taken 03 April 2017 at 22:23 BST : 15 frames of 10 secs at the Brickfield Observatory, with an 80mm Refractor with ASI 178MC Cooled camera stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.
4.5 Day Lunar Image
Taken on 01 April 2017 at 20:40 BST with an ASI 178MC Cooled camera at prime focus on an 80mm Refractor, it is a stacked video image of 500 frames.
M51 Whirlpool Galaxy Image
An image of the M51 Whirlpool Galaxy. Taken 01 April 2017 at the Brickfield Observatory at 21:49 BST : 30 frames of 51 secs, with an 80mm Refractor with ASI 178MC Cooled camera stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.
Night Sky Above The CADSAS Observatory
Here are a couple of lovely pictures of the night sky at our Observatory. Captured by a Cranbrook School student, while at one of our recent observing evenings.
March 2016 View of the Night Sky above the CADSAS Observatory
Constellation Orion above the CADSAS Observatory in March 2016
Digital Photo Magazine Star Field Tutorial
One of our members tried the interesting Photoshop tutorial about star field images, in the March issue of Digital Photo magazine. It’s all about capturing a night sky image in RAW file format and then processing it, so you can use it as background in a finished composition, or just as an astronomy night sky image.
First step was to download the (free) Adobe RAW file plugin for Photoshop, together with their DNG (digital negative converter) to convert the .CR2 files from the Canon camera. Some version juggling and a couple of hours, was needed to make it work with an older version of Photoshop. But it did!
Applying the suggestions from the magazine to a night sky image already taken and already on the laptop, it was encouraging. First stage only, but below is the star field image produced, ready for use in an image composition.
And below the processed image, there is a small section cropped from the BEFORE version of the same image, to the same scale.
AFTER
Processed Star Field Image
BEFORE
Section of the same image BEFORE processing
